“Why not?” he asked, with a grin. “I haven’t heard that Jim had to ask you twice, with him on the run.”
“Yes, but Jim needed me.”
“Well?”
Blanche’s eyes shone in the darkness. She reached up and tenderly kissed the freckled face she loved.
“Neither will you, Larry, boy,” she said, all her love shining in her eyes. “If Jim fixes things with Molly so he no longer needs us here, why, I’ll beat the longest trail with you you can figure out, just how and when you want me. Yes, and you can do all you fancy for Lightning.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Lightning’s Triumph
FOR the third time in his life Beelzebub was in the company of Molly’s pinto mare. The little creature was above herself. She was full of oats, and bored to extinction with the luxurious monotony of a barn to which she was quite unaccustomed. So she danced her way through the Gateway with a frivolity unbecoming her years, and her splendid companion looked on in dignified unconcern.
The morning was fresh. There was a nip in the air, which was calm with the promise of a later blazing day. The sun was rolling up the night mists, and with every passing moment fresh vistas of forest, and valley, and crag, were appearing through the thin grey of the lifting veil.
Molly had waited for nothing. She had risen that morning with the dawn, full of an intense yearning for the home that was hers, and the queer, disreputable old servant and friend for whom she entertained the gravest fears. Her anxiety was real. It was even a little more desperate than Blanche cared to see. So the older woman had urged her brother promptly.
Once beyond the barren crags of the Gateway, Jim and Molly were swallowed up by the forest. And somehow their earlier talk died out in harmony with the hush of their surroundings.